SOURCE: Bagby, Lewis. Introduction to Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Russian Byronism, pp. 1-18. University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.

In the following essay, Bagby reviews Bestuzhev's accomplishments and contributions to the history of Russian literature.

Literature is a good friend but an evil master.

—Bestuzhev-Marlinsky

In early-nineteenth-century Russia, the narratives of Alexander Alexandrovich Bestuzhev-Marlinsky (1797-1837) literally moved men to action, catalyzing life choices by literary example. They captured the imagination of not only his generation but the next. In his memoirs Ivan Turgenev (1818-83) insisted that Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's heroes were to be met everywhere in society, young men conversing in “marlinisms,” a special metaphoric and flamboyant language coined from Bestuzhev's pen name Marlinsky to describe the style he innovated in Russian letters. According to Turgenev, these “marlinist” poseurs appeared haughty and insolent, alternately pulling sorrowful and belligerent faces, and lived their short days and long nights, “with storms in...